WikiLeaks

Some good news for a change, as a US judge orders the release from jail of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who has been imprisoned for a year for refusing to cooperate with a Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. The judge, however, refused to waive the $256,000 that Manning was charged for refusing to cooperate with the investigation. I also draw parallels with the ongoing efforts in the UK to extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of the documents leaked by Manning.

With one week to go until the start of the US extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, I urge the mainstream media to get more involved, drawing on a recent Guardian article by journalist and academic Roy Greenslade, in which he called on newspaper editors to speak out against the proposed extradition as an urgent and necessary defence of press freedom.

A link to – and my report about – my recent interview with Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek for their “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast, in which we discussed Guantánamo and my recent US trip to call for its closure, and the proposed extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A round-up of the radio interviews I undertook during my recent US visit to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the 18th anniversary of its opening.

A cross-post, with my own brief introduction, of a powerful open letter to the British home secretary Priti Patel by over 70 medical professionals from around the world, warning of their fears that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh maximum-security prison, and facing extradition to the US, may die in prison, and needs “urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health.”

My half-hour interview about Guantánamo, past, present and future, the US torture program and the plight of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with Bob Connors and Tom Walker on the Peace and Justice Report, a show on Sarasota Community Radio in Florida.

The latest news regarding Julian Assange, held at Belmarsh maximum-security prison since April, pending his proposed extradition to the US, to face trumped-up espionage charges regarding WikiLeaks’ work as a publisher, making available classified US documents – including the Guantánamo files, which I worked on with WikiLeaks as a media partner – for which there is a compelling case that the public should be informed. Assange’s role was as a publisher, and his proposed extradition is a chilling assault on press freedoms, and freedom of speech. The UK government shouldn’t be going along with it, but in fact they seem to be working very closely with US officials, and at Assange’s latest case management hearing his conditions of confinement seemed to be taking their toll, as he was frail and often appeared confused.

My response to the outrageous and alarming decision by the US Justice Department, under Donald Trump, to charge Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act, and how fundamentally it threatens press freedom, plus my call for the British government to refuse to extradite Assange to the US, and also to move him from Belmarsh, where his mental health is deteriorating.

Linking to and dicussing my recent half-hour radio interview with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio in Victoria, Canada, in which we discussed the eighth anniversary of the release of classified military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners by WikiLeaks, and also discussed the situation faced by Julian Assange since he was arrested in the UK after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it granted him nearly seven years ago.

On the eighth anniversary of WikiLeaks’ release of classified military files from Guantánamo, on which I worked as a media partner, I recall how I got involved, I reiterate the significance of the files, and I call for the release from custody, in the UK and the US, of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.